Friday, August 01, 2008

Drill-There-Not-Here Exports Environment Damage

Does Nancy Pelosi imagine that with so much of America declared off-limits, the planet is less injured as drilling shifts to Kazakhstan and Venezuela and Equatorial Guinea? That Russia will be more environmentally scrupulous than we in drilling in its Arctic?

The net environmental effect of Pelosi's no-drilling willfulness is negative. Outsourcing U.S. oil production does nothing to lessen worldwide environmental despoliation. It simply exports it to more corrupt, less efficient, more unstable parts of the world -- thereby increasing net planetary damage. Here in the U.S., one out of every three ears of corn is stuffed into a gas tank (by way of ethanol), causing not just food shortages abroad and high prices at home, but intensive increases in farming with all of the attendant environmental problems (soil erosion, insecticide pollution, water consumption, etc.).

This to prevent drilling on an area in the Arctic one-sixth the size of Dulles Airport that leaves untouched a refuge one-third the size of Britain. ~Charles Krauthammer

This always reminds me of the liberals in my town that think that "slow growth" will solve our traffic congestion problem. Just like we obviously need more oil, my town (D.C. Suburbs) needs more roads. They have this fantasy that they can get rid of the need for roads by slowing growth, but unless goes way negative, obviously that won't solve the problem!

I guess the "we can't drill our way out of the problem" is another example of malfunctioning liberal wishful thinking.

> They have this fantasy that they can get rid of the need for roads by slowing growth

Similarly in my town.

Except they don't slow growth at all, they apply "impact fees" to developers, then ignore applying those fees to building new roads (What? "Where does the money go?", then? Shut up! Who asked you to comment!?!)

The result is a lot of overloaded roads during the rush hours, when roads that have been two lane for literally decades, despite the expansion of the contiguous suburban area by more than 20 miles during the same time frame, try to deal with the traffic.